Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
Both Pol. and Ethical Philosophy
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Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking
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I revised the preceding post after initially posting it, so it is advisable to refresh your screen to read the revised post.
Having a rational end is not all that difficult. For example, everyone who has to work for a living is rational in doing so, provided the job is not criminal or unethical. There are, however, moral quandaries that sometimes arise when one's employer wants the employee to engage in criminal or unethical conduct. I may address that issue in Chapter 4 (not yet written) of my book Reason and Human Ethics.
Perhaps I had it in mind the quality of people who embark on some life-plan with the attitude of "at all costs". Or, "stop at nothing".I admit I might not be catching the correct nuance in the exchange above; these are fine points of intention I don't often dwell on.
It strikes me though that even though both Hitler and Buonaparte probably deliberated at length on their life-goals with much forethought, ultimately they still wreaked havoc. This may be for a wide variety of reasons though, and not posing any criticism of the power of rationality.
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One thing I've learned in my long life is that "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley." (Robert Burns, "To a Mouse")
One learns to be adaptable and roll with the punches. It's not "all or nothing." Only in my retirement have I achieved any semblance of my life goals, and that's not for want of trying. However, I nevertheless learned a lot on all the detours, notwithstanding the fact that I never intended to take those detours in the first place. I've learned that every experience, good or bad, is a learning experience. There's no point cursing "fate" (which I don't believe in anyway). Now, in my mid-70s, I look back and laugh.
Something going on lately --and I admit I haven't got any more than this observation to offer --is what might be labeled the extreme socialization of knowledge. Not a ground-breaking insight, I'm sure. But my interactions with digiteratti lately, hint that today's social butterflies wish only to retain whatever knowledge everyone else in their networks possesses. They only feel obliged to know whatever their friends know, to facilitate a shared frame-of-reference for chatter. Nobody wants to stumble or slow a chat with questions, (e.g., "What do you mean? Who are you discussing? Who are you quoting? Do you have a source?"). Transmissions must be fast. I wouldn't even mention this unless it were so widespread; but it surely is.
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Feliks, it's good that you are keeping your finger on the pulse of the hoi polloi. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. This kind of thing seems to be happening especially on the fringes of the extreme (Trumpian) Right and the extreme (woke) Left. I was hardly aware of the latter, but I am now on chapter 3 of John McWhorter's Woke Racism. Whereas in earlier chapters he made blanket assertions with little evidence, he is now citing chapter and verse. Although he has provided no evidence (as distinguished from bare assertion) that this kind of thing is going on in public elementary and secondary schools, it's clear from his documentation (and from the little I have myself read in the media) that it is becoming more and more widespread in academia and in the media, with Stalinist "show trials" becoming something of a norm.
Thanks! I've no choice for now; I'm surrounded by it daily. But y'know, I think what's happening is that it always takes 'strength of character' to withdraw from the camraderie and laughter of the mob. For kids of course, it's not easy to abandon one's friends and study unfamiliar subjects on one's own, or train oneself in techniques like Reasoning. But this new pressure to follow --and talk easily about -- sports, or movies, and TV seems like its too much even for most adults these days.
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But y'know, I think what's happening is that it always takes 'strength of character' to withdraw from the camraderie and laughter of th..."
Apologies for my seeming lightheartedness about this kind of thing. I have had the privilege of living in an Ivory Tower during the last nine years, having been retired from employment and not having to deal with most people on a day-to-day basis. This has been especially the case during the pandemic, when my only exposure to others (other than my wife) is when I go to the supermarket, the very occasional family function, and one get-together (during a lull in the pandemic) with a couple in another county who share many interests with my wife and me.
It was not always so. I experienced many of the same kinds of things you are experiencing at virtually all times from the time I was a child until my retirement in 2012. (My college, grad school, and law school social experiences were different but often problematic in a different way.) This was especially galling at the workplace, where one is not really free to express one's own opinions and where one has no ability to isolate oneself from the usual chatter about trivial things. I was fortunate during the last few years of my employment to have an immediate boss who is a nice person and even something of an intellectual. We're still distant friends (he's read my postretirement books). Although we differ on politics and religion, we mostly avoid those subjects and never fail to be polite and respectful when we do briefly mention them.
One of my purposes of establishing this Goodreads group in 2014 was to have a place where people with intellectual interests could communicate with each other about subjects relevant to political and ethical philosophy. The internet has its evils, but it allows people who would otherwise be totally isolated to find others who share similar interests.
One of the classic virtues is courage. In ancient times, this mostly meant courage in battle (which usually involved hand-to-hand combat). But it also means the courage to stand alone, apart from the crowd, and decline to follow all the inane things that most people find most important. While one is employed, one may not be able to resist publicly without getting fired, but one can always, in one's own mind, refuse to accept the absurdities which pass for truths in what is largely an insane world.
There's a subtle danger in being part of a mob even when the mob is not out in the streets with pitchforks and torches. "Going with the flow'; being a "yes man", an "organizational man", being a "Babbitt" can entail deep moral and mental dilemmas. Hannah Arendt explores this in her book on Adolf Eichmann's trial; Rebecca West does so too in her two books on treason. Conscience in support of (or supported by) Reason is also a theme in many fine fiction works.
I love the turn-of-phrase from way back in the day: "But Ma, everyone else was doing it --" ("Well, if everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?")
This applies to something like, "using a heavy rock in a snowball fight".
America's urbanites are increasingly confronted with all this lately as ordinances and regulations 'ratchet up' in our workplaces and in our cities in general. Probably the same situation in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.
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Feliks, to what ordinances and regulations are you referring?
Generally, my experience is that there is often a conflict between preservation (keeping one's job) and honesty (always saying what's on one's mind). The rub comes when a boss insists that the employee do something that is unethical or even illegal. I had to take a stand a few times in my law career refusing to do something unethical, illegal, or just plain stupid. On one such occasion, my boss was dead drunk (calling me near the end of a 5-martini lunch with a client), and I just didn't do what he demanded despite his insistence that I do it immediately and that I would be fired if I refused. The next day, when he was back at the office, he sheepishly realized that he was wrong (and even crazy) in giving me such an order and was glad I didn't comply. But, for 24 hours, I wondered whether I was going to get fired for refusing to comply with his earlier directive, My boss in my next firm progressed from alcohol to cocaine. He tried to get me involved in his unethical (perhaps illegal) schemes, but I delayed doing so for month after month (giving him excuses) until I finally got a job in another law firm. Then, the boss in my new firm told us lawyers that his personal rule (evidently mentioned in order to encourage us to act the same way) was that one had to be willing to go to jail for one's client. As I stated in my earlier post, my immediate boss in my last law firm was a decent fellow. Although he faced pressure from his superiors in another city, these issues, insofar as they involved me, were about matters that didn't implicate ethics or legality.
I mention these episodes for the benefit of you or others who may experience similar ethical or legal conflicts when dealing with bosses.
re: #461. I would attest from personal experience that regulatory measures in New York City have exploded. I can't do more than just sketch out a few notes; it would take me several long-winded posts to account for everything that's been going on and I don't want to sound "wild-eyed" about it.
There's not just brand-new ordinances for public health either; (although these are certainly worth narrating in detail).
The Big Apple --in general --is a metropolis with a furious amount of signs, signals, pavement stripings, sidewalk markings; loudspeaker announcements. There's an extraordinary level of flashing lights and blinking arrows governing New York life. Security cameras at most traffic intersections to enforce traffic signals but also stopping or idling your car, blocking a curb-cut or a driveway or a bus lane, bike lane, or street cleaning.
Rules for recycling; rules for parking vehicles and bikes; leash laws for dogs. There's rules for construction sites and delivery trucks; rules for skateboarders and joggers. Rules for boarding buses and trains; spitting; speeding.
Rules for smoking or buying cigarettes, liquor, beer, soft drinks (foodstore counters are bedecked with legalese). And you must even use the correct kind of shopping bag when toting your goods.
Fines and fees are rampantly applied. Toss the wrong kind of trash in a public wastebasket? $100 fine. ADA regulations; litter laws; loitering laws.
With what's been going on lately (health mandates) it just seems as if there's a lot more motorist road-rage on our streets; a lot more pedestrian arguments and scuffles. I have noted too, more homeless tents in our vacant lots and triangles.
In the workplace: well, I need another whole post to describe what's going on in our office buildings.
But I'll pause here rather than let this rant balloon. You're probably already sorry you asked eh? ha
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I can't do more than just sketch out a few notes; it would take me several long-winded p..."
Thanks. I get the overall picture. It sounds like California (per Bill Maher, whose application to put solar panels on his house took years to process). The question is whether all these regulations are justified in a big metropolis such as NYC. I suppose that, to answer that question, one would have to consider each regulation individually--something that none of us has time to do. That's why there's a city council.
Bruno LaTour's Laboratory Life narrates an iconic instance of what happens when researchers go looking for the results they want to find. The book is about how steadfastly the scientific community denies psychological bias like this. LaTour's assertions emerged in the early 1970s --and while some might like to imagine that we've progressed since then --I can name another more contemporary case where the same thing transpired, on the same epic scale. Test results can always be polluted by human bias.
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Yes, there is a lot of confirmation bias (also called "myside bias") in the world, including the academic world. I am discussing that, among many other things, in my work-in-progress, Reason and Human Ethics.
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In light of the many baseless conspiracy theories being circulated in public and social media, it has become fashionable in scholarly circles and elsewhere to ridicule all conspiracy theories. However, there have been some actual conspiracies accurately reported by historians throughout the ages. Accordingly, critical thinking demands that we distinguish between real and fictional conspiracies. It turns out that some conspiracy theories have ample evidentiary support but are nevertheless not universally accepted. This brief essay addresses the question of how to approach conspiracy theories from a critical-thinking perspective. It argues that a few conspiracy theories, well supported by evidence, are either probable or possible, depending on the quality of evidential support for them. As an example, my essay reviews the scholarly and other literature on the question of whether there was a conspiracy behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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I have now posted a revised version of my essay on conspiracies at https://www.academia.edu/66426245/Con....
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re: #466 Wow! I did not realize Alan, that you were going to author such an essay. Bravo. I'm going to check it out. As you might recall from some of my previous posts in this forum, one of my close personal acquaintances possesses a wildly aberrant mindset of this same stripe.
This good friend of mine is a superficially rational-seeming bloke to all outward examination (holds a job, drives a car, owns a house, etc) but he's hapless and blighted mentally, an individual secretly subsumed by conspiracy-theory obsession.
I've tried to shake him out of this malaise. I even purchased and sent him the paper by Stephen Lewandowsky (re: correlation between free-market thinking and science denial) at a cost of $30. No effect at all. Debating these theories at length --with a dedicated opponent --can make one cross-eyed and hoarse-voiced.
Via this odd relationship, what I've come to realize is that the grip of these ideas on the modern mind is nearly-impossible to shake; and at some point I had to conclude that they have their root in mental illness.
Said another way: when irrationality is taken to such extremes, one can't hardly even flatter it with the label 'irrationality' anymore. At some point one has to consider --however reluctantly ---that the person you are debating suffers mental problems. That's what I've come to believe about my pal.
But I will review your essay with great interest. Good stuff!
Addendum:the Stephen Lewandowsky (et al) paper is here
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...
Tiny URL:
https://tinyurl.com/yce3g7ku
This is exactly the kind of mental infirmity which plagues my chum. Such citizens are Theseus-like figures: they choose to wander down a labyrinth from which the golden strand of reason can not wend them back.
p.s. Yes, I'm aware of the criticism the paper has received towards the methodology of its data collection. I weighed up that issue but I don't feel it detracts from the phenomenon Lewandowsky set out to explore.
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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...
Tiny URL:
https://tinyurl.com/yce3g7ku
I'm aware of the criticism the paper has rec..."
All I could get was the Abstract, not the article itself. I see you bought the entire paper, which I am not going to do.
Regarding the correlation between free-market thinking and science denial, a correlation, of course, is not a causal relationship. I guess what the authors of the paper may be saying is that they both derive from irrational thinking. This would be ironic, since free-market thinking originally went hand-in-hand with the Enlightenment. See Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, et al. (Note: I am not myself an advocate of unregulated markets.)
For a different study and analysis of such phenomena, see this January 14, 2022 Politico article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazin....
I am becoming more and more skeptical when scientists and social scientists make grandiose generalizations about historical matters based on allegedly scientific studies of human behavior—most of which rely on possibly fallacious analogous or correlative reasoning. The more I read, the more I realize how ignorant many of these people are about history. Their blanket dismissal of all “conspiracy theories”—including well-established and probable conspiracies throughout history—is an example of their cavalier treatment of matters of which they have little knowledge. This is what prompted me to write my paper “Conspiracies: Actual, Probable, Possible, and Fictional: An Exercise in Critical Thinking” in the first place. I am not a science denier. I believe in the reality of human-caused climate change, evolution by natural selection, and so forth. But when scientists or social “scientists” apply their vaunted wisdom to matters of human history or behavior, one should take their dicta with a grain of salt.
Lewandowsky is a psychiatrist (or perhaps a psychologist) and his paper was written by and for members of the psychiatric field. The relationship he delineates is not causal, but curious. Why do these two branches of thought so often exhibit themselves in tandem, in so many individuals today? This is what he seems to be asking. My impression (from this paper and other sources) is that persons can harbor this strange admixture of ideas from off-kilter emotional profiles. Lopsided --even crippling --degrees of suspicion, cynicism, and skepticism likely stem in turn from clinically valid chemical conditions in the brain such as paranoia and schizophrenia.
In other words, someone obsessed with 'not being cheated or robbed out of their money' by government taxation/regulations may also feel that governments 'try to get at their money' via 'secret programs', or other trickery; that scientists are in league with government to effect this, that there is too much government, too much communist-leaning government, etc etc etc. They seek clues in news media to support all this, they pore over exotic bodies-of-thought such as numerology.
Although Lewandowsky's method may be criticized, I feel the questions he's posing are a useful tool to point fringe-theorists to. Why do paranoia-politics dovetail so neatly with a paranoia towards science?
I agree with the direction of your concluding paragraph above; but I sure don't know what to do about it.
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It's likely that vulgarized laissez faire notions are present with many on the right-wing lunatic fringe (just as there used to be Stalinists on the left-wing lunatic fringe). As the Bible says somewhere, "the poor [I add "in mind"] will always be with us."
One of the common errors of the day is that the free market system (I eschew "capitalism" as a Marxist intrusion) espouses a system w/o legal limitations and misses the point of "laissez faire (see J.S. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy"). Quite the contrary, free markets depend on legal rules defining property, guaranteeing its transfer by inheritance and contract, and prohibiting fraud. Free market thinkers (e.g., Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty" gives many details) also recognize that there are some public needs the free market will not provide: e.g., collective goods that are not guaranteed by private interest such as clean air (any one individual may benefit finacially by "short-cuts" that pollute). This is true from Adam Smith on. Various shallow thinkers and special pleaders of the present day ignore the major thinkers of economics. jim vice
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To all: Jim Vice speaks with a wealth of experience in teaching, research, and scholarship on classical liberalism.
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The following quote (which I admit I am taking just a bit out context) may be on point: “And with cruellest irony of all, what if vulgarized science should traduce Adam Smith himself, obscuring his purposes and making his design the misconstrued object of interested approbation or ignorant calumny?” Joseph Cropsey, Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957), 100.
A brief re-visit to the topic of 'conspiracies', if I may. Because I believe I can answer my own question posed earlier. Each time I've discussed world events with a conspiracy-theorist, the problem is finding "common ground" for gullibility. Where do they draw the line between obvious fiction, versus signs-of-possible-conspiracy?
I've seen this pattern emerge time and time again:
Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy? The Jersey Devil? The Easter Bunny? No, no, no, no.
Fairies, in general? Gnomes? Leprechauns? Is the moon made of green cheese? Demons?
No. No. No. No. Maybe.
Loch Ness Monster? Abominable Snow Man? Atlantis? ESP? UFOs?
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Yes, especially to gov't. cover-up of UFOs.
What do you believe the restaurant table and these chairs where we're sitting right now, are made of? Atoms, right?
Maybe. Scientists say so. But it might not be. It's just something they say.
Holocaust denial? Yes. Freemasonry? Yes. Semitic control of world banking? Yes. Secret Rothschild banking family schemes? Yes. Secret British Royal Family schemes? Yes. Pharmaceutical companies holding back cures? Yes.
From there on out, full credibility towards:
JFK & MLK assassinations rigged, 9/11 rigged, Timothy McVeigh innocent, Pearl Harbor false flag attack, AIDS cover-up, NASA faked moon landings.
So the line of demarcation between harmless fantasy and potential conspiracy seems to be whether or not some hidden group of elites can gain some profit at the expense of their belief.
Conspiracy-theorists I've met invariably feel their survival threatened by organizations; especially by any entity with the power to lessen their personal income.
Money means individual survival and personal freedom. Therefore income taxes, free-market regulation (and even gov't itself) are all means whereby the mighty and powerful keep private citizens chained, helpless, and impoverished.
But since there's no obvious advantage to any special-interest group towards their disbelief in 'fairies' --since no cabal can possibly gain either way on that score--they don't feel jeopardized disbelieving in fairies.
'Powerful forces in the Vatican', on the other hand, do have a special interest in deceiving Catholics (passing the collection plate during church services). The conspiracy theorist is, "wise to this scheme". Yet another, "trick played on working men".
It's an ever expanding spiral that can account for any opposing facts. "Professors fake history" and "scientists fake experiments" ('they receive gov't money; so they have vested interests' in gov't schemes like fake vaccinations, etc).
That's the conclusion I draw as to why fringe-thinkers mistrust government and academia in the same breath. Monetary antagonism (group vs individual) is the root of all conspiracies.
Beg pardon for my lengthy post.
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Each time I've discussed world events with a conspiracy-theorist, the prob..."
You are talking about fictitious conspiracy theories of the lunatic fringe. As I stated in my paper on the subject, there have also been actual conspiracies in human history. One of them is the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In fact, the U.S. Justice Department has recently charged many of the defendants in the January 6 matter with "seditious conspiracy." That is not just another conspiracy theory. Like the assassination of President Lincoln, this was an actual conspiracy. It was concocted and led by such right-wing militias as the Oathkeepers.
I agree with your remark. The difference between actual conspiracies and suspected conspiracies is valid; it has earned significant scrutiny and is generating a growing literature. But you can't easily tease out this important distinction when you talk to hardcore fringe-theory loons. They invariably lump all conspiracies together. The line between what they will fight for and what they will sit still for, seems to be as I illustrated above. There's a latent paranoia towards the forces of the establishment. Schemes emanating from this quarter are the ones they fear.
Been trying to pin down this guy's name for a while. James Randi.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R...
He was the witty former magician who went around exposing charlatans and fraudsters in the field of the supernatural and in entertainment circles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Mil...
Helped spearhead the field of modern skepticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
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Postmodernism is an academic doctrine that arose in the second half of the twentieth century. Although it is a very complicated ideology, whose followers have different and sometimes contradictory positions, one of its hallmarks is that reason and evidence are inventions of the white, straight, male patriarchy and, as such, are to be rejected. As Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, two critics of some aspects of postmodernism, have observed:I am cross-filing this comment in the “Political Philosophy in the 20th and 21st Centuries” topic of this Goodreads group.[Postmodernism] carries politically actionable consequences. If what we accept as true is only accepted as such because the discourses of straight, white, wealthy, Western men have been privileged, [postmodern] applied Theory indicates this can be challenged by empowering marginalized identity groups and insisting their voices take precedence. This belief increased the aggressiveness of identity politics to such an extent that it even led to concepts like “research justice.” This alarming proposal demands that scholars preferentially cite women and minorities—and minimize citations of white Western men—because empirical research that values knowledge production rooted in evidence and reasoned argument is an unfairly privileged cultural construct of white Westerners. It is therefore, in this view, a moral obligation to share the prestige of rigorous research with “other forms of research,” including superstition, spiritual beliefs, cultural traditions and beliefs, identity-based experiences, and emotional responses.
Endnote: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—And Why This Harms Everybody (Durham, NC: Pitchstone, 2020), chap. 2, loc. 917 of 6361 (emphasis added), Kindle (citing Andrew Jolivétte, Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change [Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2015]).
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
The above-referenced excerpts are from the published book (see https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E....
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
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(As a result of my New York Times subscription, the foregoing link can be accessed without charge for fourteen days, notwithstanding the usual New York Times paywall.)
I am also cross-filing this comment in the “Abortion (and Related) Law and Litigation” topic of this Goodreads group.
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I have just posted my draft of Chapter 2 (“Human Reason”) of my forthcoming book Reason and Human Ethics at https://www.academia.edu/74417357/Hum....
This chapter discusses human reason and (secular, biological) teleology, reasoning about ends and means, general remarks about human reason (differences between formal and informal logic), some famous fallacies, and critical thinking.
If you have questions or comments about this draft chapter, please don’t hesitate to post them in this thread.
Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher and Historian
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
The above-referenced excerpts are from the published book (see https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E....
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
Alan, in response to your invitation in post #483, I offer a comment on a passage on p. 4: “Thrasymachus thought that this was a good thing; the postmodernists apparently--if their relativism would permit such a `value judgment’--would think it was bad.” I think it is the other way around: their relativism justified their strongest value judgments in the area of things they thought were “bad.” Many of these appear in the areas of gender, race, and class, a trio that in the name of social justice got a lot of attention in the 1980s and 1990s. A common postmodern argument attacked “essentializing.” An example of essentializing would be to claim that something like patriarchy is rooted in something permanent: nature, biology, theology, etc. Take your pick. From the standpoint of essentializing, any effort to alter patriarchy is a mistake because you can’t change something fixed in the nature of things without suffering negative consequences.
The postmodernists reject essentializing with relativism. They would reject the essentializing of patriarchy by arguing that patriarchy is a social construct forged in history. It produces bad consequences and should be eliminated, and because it is a social construct, relative to history, you can eliminate it without worrying about the negative consequences that concern essentializers.
This relativism becomes a problem for postmodernists when they want to affirm something instead of attacking the essentializing of patriarchy, racism, etc. When you want to affirm something, essentializing affirms it more strongly than relativizing it. This is a tension that is recognized among postmodernists but I’m not sure that it is ever overcome.
Postmodernists reject essentialistic objectivity, but they use evidence and argument to substantiate their alternative relativistic accounts of the formation of social constructs in history. What is distinctive about these accounts is their reliance on theorizing about language that claims that language does not reflect reality but instead shapes the way reality is viewed, including the reality of the human subject. Here, there is debate among postmodernists. Derrida and Foucault, for example, while agreeing that language shapes the way reality is seen, have very different ideas about how language does this.
Postmodernism, then, is yet one more variant of skepticism. Variants of skepticism have been common for a long time. Kant denied the possibility of accessing directly noumenon, the thing-in-itself. He knew the noumenon was there, behind the appearances that we encounter in the phenomena of experience. We just can’t access it. Postmodernists make an analogous argument in claiming that we cannot access independent reality directly. Instead, we can only access it indirectly, through linguistic mediation, which is always relative to history.
The emergent metaphysical turn is trying to get beyond this skepticism, but still has a long way to go. To succeed, I think one must revive intellectual intuition, which has long been discredited. If I’m not mistaken, Kant thought that only God could have intellectual intuition. Meillassoux goes back to Aristotle in his effort to revive intellectual intuition, but I don’t think he is altogether successful, not because he goes to Aristotle, but because he goes to the wrong place in Aristotle.
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Thanks, Bob, for your thoughts. By the way, the passage is on page 6, following a discussion (pages 5–6) of Socrates’s cross-examination of Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic. For the benefit of those who have not read those pages, I explain therein how Thrasymachus argued that justice is the advantage of the stronger, specifically the advantage of the ruling element (for example, a tyrant, an oligarchy, or a democracy) in a political regime. In other words, Thrasymachus represents the view that might makes right. I follow an excerpt from the Republic to this effect with the following paragraph (page 6):
When one stops to think about it, Thrasymachus’s view resembles that of contemporary postmodernism. The difference is that Thrasymachus thought that this was a good thing; the postmodernists apparently—if their relativism would permit such a “value judgment”—would think it was bad.12 Like the “survival of the fittest” doctrine of Social Darwinism, Thrasymachus attempts to derive a perverse “ought” from a presumed “is.” To this extent, we can agree with the modern criticism of attempting to derive an “ought” from an “is.”In my endnote 12 (see above quote), I state: “Theoretical and applied postmodernism comprise a very complicated and diverse (sometimes inconsistent) set of doctrines that are outside the scope of this work. Suffice it to say that postmodernism and its activist offshoots typically attack reason, evidence, science, objectivity, and sometimes even individual rights such as freedom of speech. As such, they are diametrically opposed to the position taken in the present book.”
After I wrote the foregoing comparison of Thrasymachus to postmodernism, I was astonished to discover that Stephen R. C. Hicks, a philosophy professor, had made almost exactly the same point in a book I am currently reading:
So far my argument accounts for postmodernism’s subjectivism and relativism, its Left-wing politics, and the need to connect the two.Hicks’s foregoing view is almost exactly the same as mine, though I stated it much more succinctly. I am almost finished reading his book and will probably review it on Goodreads and Academia.edu sometime within the next couple of days.
If this explanation is correct, then postmodernism is what I call Reverse Thrasymacheanism, alluding to the sophist Thrasymachus of Plato’s Republic. Some postmodernists see part of their project as rehabilitating the Sophists, and this makes perfect sense.
One could, after doing some philosophy, come to be a true believer in subjectivism and relativism. Accordingly, one could come to believe that reason is derivative, that will and desire rule, that society is a battle of competing wills, that words are merely tools in the power struggle for dominance, and that all is fair in love and war.
That is the position the Sophists argued 2400 years ago. The only difference, then, between the Sophists and the postmodernists is whose side they are on. Thrasymachus was representative of the second and cruder generation of Sophists, marshalling subjectivist and relativistic arguments in support of the political claim that justice is the interest of the stronger. The postmodernists—coming after two millennia of Christianity and two centuries of socialist theory—simply reverse that claim: Subjectivism and relativism are true, except that the postmodernists are on the side of the weaker and historically-oppressed groups. Justice, contrary to Thrasymachus, is the interest of the weaker. (Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault expanded ed. [Roscoe, IL: Ockham’s Razor, 2014], 108–9, Kindle)
So, it’s not clear to me that you and I differ on this question or, if so, what our differences are. I also agree with the remainder of your comment, with the possible exception of the last paragraph about intellectual intuition. I think Kant did argue in favor of human intellectual intuition in his following remark (which I quote on page 62 of my Free Will and Human Life ): “these laws [the categorical imperative and freedom of choice], like mathematical postulates, are incapable of being proved and yet apodictic” (Metaphysics of Morals, 6:225, in Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996] [emphasis in the original]).
Regarding intellectual intuition generally, I am developing what, to my knowledge, is a unique theory that I will explain in my work-in-progress Reason and Human Ethics. Since, however, this approach is not yet in final form, I will not discuss it at this time. I will communicate it in the present Goodreads forum at the time of the publication of Reason and Human Ethics later this year. On the other hand, I may eventually decide that my aforesaid tentative theory is not correct, in which case I will abandon it.
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I am also posting this comment in some other topics in this group.
I enjoyed Robert W's summary as well."Essentializing" sounds like an odd attack, to my ears. I disagree that knowledge can be undercut simply because its tradition. It maybe only looks like a tradition from our perspective.
What would post-modernists rather put in place of "age-old wisdom"? Must every generation invent everything from scratch? You can find that in science fiction.
Me, I freely admit that although I've never been bitten by a mad dog, I am willing to take the word of those who have, and I accept outright that it is unpleasant, based purely on their say-so.
Whether you are a hominid or a hoplite, a Simonite, or a Hugenot --no matter your timeperiod --as a human you realize that air is good for you, floods can drown you, and not to pick up hot tongs bare-handed. There was never a time when knowing these principles were not essential for each and every age to abide by. We don't wear BBQ-mitts simply because someone says to, we wear them because fire is painful. Whether past, present, or future.
Alan, my apologies for my page number typo in #484.The issue I posed centered on your questioning whether postmodernist "relativism would permit such a `value judgment.'" I described a context in which it could do that. Maybe I misread you in thinking that you questioned that possibility. I would agree that postmodern relativism is not the only way to attack patriarchy, but it is one way to do that. Also, anyone who rejects both the relativist and essentialist accounts of patriarchy would have to find another alternative to explain how it ever came to exist. Finally, with respect to "value judgments," my general point is that postmodern relativism is better at attacking than affirming.
Regarding your comment on Kant in your penultimate paragraph, I would agree with what you say about what he says in the practical context of ethics. I cite a relevant passage in #161 in the Kant thread, where he accesses directly the "noumenon" of the human subject. Whether that is consistent with his ruling out the possibility of such direct access elsewhere is debatable. More importantly, the subject matter of ethics differs from the subject matter of a reality independent of humans in today's emergent metaphysical turn to things. The problem of intellectual intuition differs with respect to these different subject matters.
I couldn't find the Kant passage you cite. I have a copy of Metaphysics of Morals, but not Practical Philosophy. Give me the chapter title and sub-section in which it appears. Maybe I can find it that way. The Metaphysics of Morals that I have does not have a chapter six. Instead, it is divided into different parts and each part starts with chapter one and none of them get to chapter six.
The analogy to "mathematical postulates" is useful insofar as it suggests something about philosophical principles or beginnings. But mathematical thinking in the context of intellectual intuition risks presupposing Pythagorean mathematizing of the cosmos. Meillassoux takes care to avoid such a presupposition (After Finitude 12).
Feliks, I'm not sure that I follow you.How would you apply what you say in #488 to patriarchy?
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I was being ironic or sarcastic. You took it literally. I will consider rewording this passage in the final draft in order to avoid such a misunderstanding.
Robert W wrote (#488): "Regarding your comment on Kant in your penultimate paragraph, I would agree with what you say about what he says in the practical context of ethics. I cite a relevant passage in #161 in the Kant thread, where he accesses directly the "noumenon" of the human subject. Whether that is consistent with his ruling out the possibility of such direct access elsewhere is debatable. More importantly, the subject matter of ethics differs from the subject matter of a reality independent of humans in today's emergent metaphysical turn to things. The problem of intellectual intuition differs with respect to these different subject matters."
As always, I am much more interested in the ethical (or political) question than in the metaphysical question. See the seventh and eighth paragraphs of my review of Hicks’s book on postmodernism here, which address the same or similar issue. Your #161 in the Kant topic is exactly on point; reading it just now hit me on the head like a hammer. This is exactly what I say at the end of my draft of Chapter 1 of Reason and Human Ethics about secular teleology, a theme I will develop later in the book. Thank you very much for citing that. I had forgotten that Kant wrote that, and I will revisit Kant to recall exactly how he develops that point in the Critique of Judgment. I might, notwithstanding my decades-long aversion to Kant, end up being some kind of Kantian after all! Bob Hanna would be proud. This is what I meant in referring to intellectual intellection regarding ethics (and politics). I believe I came up with this idea before reading Kant (it is certainly implicit, if not explicit, in Strauss as well as Plato and, especially, Aristotle), but it’s good to know that I also have such a heavy hitter as Kant on my side. By the way, it also bears directly on the famous fact—value and is—ought dichotomies, involving, as it does, secular, biological teleology, which modern philosophy and science have rejected out of hand since (at least) Bacon and Hobbes.
Regarding metaphysical/scientific knowledge or intellection: I am kind of agnostic regarding whether we can really know the ultimate reality behind physics, for example. My reading in quantum physics (Henry Stapp et al.) shows many perplexities (quantum entanglement, the influence of the subject on the object in measurement, etc.) that attend our knowledge of ultimate physical realities. As I state in the above-referenced paragraphs of my review of Hicks, quantum physics seems to violate the principle of (non)contradiction. A fortiori, the principle of contradiction appears inapplicable to the questions of a first cause, the beginning of time, and the infinity of space. I first proffered these thought in my 2000 book on ethics, First Philosophy and Human Ethics , which Reason and Human Ethics will replace. After independently conceiving them, I discovered that they were similar to Kant’s antinomies.
The famous quotation from Cicero about how Socrates brought philosophy down from the sky and put it into ethical and political questions on the ground will be one of my two epigraphs for Reason and Human Ethics at the beginning of the book. The other epigraph is from Confucius, who said the approximately the same thing in a different way. In my view, human beings cannot know the ultimate physical and metaphysical realities. Scientists will always do their thing, and that is as it should be. But I don’t have any illusion that humans will ever discover the ultimate realities—at least not in the foreseeable centuries.
Robert W wrote (#488): "I couldn't find the Kant passage you cite. I have a copy of Metaphysics of Morals, but not Practical Philosophy. Give me the chapter title and sub-section in which it appears. Maybe I can find it that way. The Metaphysics of Morals that I have does not have a chapter six. Instead, it is divided into different parts and each part starts with chapter one and none of them get to chapter six."
That quote is in the third section or chapter of Part I, Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals. It’s on page 380 of Practical Philosophy. Kant’s divisions, parts, chapters, etc. are confusing. I hope you will be able to find it.
Robert wrote: "Feliks, I'm not sure that I follow you.How would you apply what you say in #488 to patriarchy?"
Hi Robert. Good question. I would reply that patriarchy does fit what I asserted above.
The Post-Modernist assigns patriarchy purely base motives. The Post-Modernist would claim that gender hegemony has been enjoyed by males so much --down through the ages --that we designate it 'essential'. We create meta-narratives to support it, (e.g., 'women are the weaker sex', 'society needs men in charge', 'women are over-emotional'). We take "undue advantage".
But patriarchy had an original root cause, and is not simply a 'promulgated' idea. Early social groups boasted many successful matriarchies before the rise of patriarchy.
Archaeologists can point the Post-modernist to changes accompanying the growth of agriculture and private wealth; or the evolution of land-ownership, marriage, and inheritance law. The anthropologist can talk about anatomical differences in the human pelvis, the gestation period for pre-natal development, and maternal instincts in mammals.
There were valid historical reasons which constrained matriarchy and allowed patriarchy to flourish; those reasons are wholly unrelated to male myth-making.
A deft Post-Modernist might leap to his feet at this point and probably cut me to ribbons. I'm freely willing to stand corrected if someone can banish what I've just touched on regarding gender and sex. I'm not welded to anything I just stated, but I will adhere to these ideas until shown better.
Feliks, in response to #491, postmodernists would not "cut [you] to ribbons." They would not do that because you offer "valid historical reasons" to explain the formation of patriarchy.The issue I addressed in #484 was whether postmodernists, because of their relativism, could make a value judgment. I indicated how they could do that by offering an account of patriarchy relative to history. Historical accounts of patriarchy can differ. Postmodernists differ among themselves in their historical accounts. The main point is that historical accounts of patriarchy show how there can be contexts in which value judgments can be based on relativism.
Robert W,Could you possibly illustrate what a Post-Modernist might say in any of the cases above, using a hypothetical sentence?
I see where their strategy has justification if I make an obviously biased statement such as "the East isn't as industrious as the West" or some such other imperialist nonsense which clearly stems from hoary old patriarchical egoism.
But what about in the case of mad dog attacks? Can they find fault with me there, (or is this premise too innocuous to provide them with ammunition)?
In other words, how do they suppose history is at such variance with itself, in order for them to depart from it? Do they mean simply because men's ideas grow and form over time --waxing and waning, sometimes imperfectly --that this means we are concocting even the root facts?
Feliks, you ask, “But what about in the case of mad dog attacks? Can they find fault with me there, (or is this premise too innocuous to provide them with ammunition)?” What is this premise? Here is how I understand it. In the mad dog example you gave earlier, you say you would believe someone who experienced a mad dog attack and said it was unpleasant. What premise is involved? The point would seem to be the difference between you and someone who, unlike you, would not believe this report that a mad dog attack occurred and was unpleasant. Could there be any basis for not believing such a report?
One could, of course, have questions about the person giving the report. Maybe this is a person who likes to make up stories, etc. etc. But we can leave such possibilities aside. Your premise seems to raise a different point, based on the assumption that there is no such reason to doubt the person reporting the attack.
Leaving that aside, then, it seems to me that the only person who would doubt the report would be an extreme empiricist who refused to believe anything he or she did not see with his or her own eyes or experience with his or her own body. Maybe there are some people who take empiricism to that extreme, but in any case, postmodernists are not empiricists. They are historicizers.
I can't imagine why postmodernists might be interested in the example you pose. But if for some reason they were interested, their issue would not be the reality of dogs biting people but the language used to describe that reality. Hence, they might be interested in the history of how the term "mad dog" came to be used if there was some reason for such an inquiry.
In saying they are historicizers, I'm repeating what I've now a number of times. I don’t have anything to add to that. Discussion of postmodernists would work best in a context of familiarity with at least some of what they actually wrote.
Hi RobertI'm sorry if I made you repeat your point. It was just that the 2nd paragraph in #492, I found a bit difficult to digest. So I asked for an example.
Rest assured, I have plenty of reading experience with post-modernism. But, not very recently; and since it is a discipline I'm not much an admirer of, it naturally fades from recall.
To restate the 'mad dog example' which I alluded to above: it would be me accepting some premise 'handed down to me from the past', on the impression that previous generations always adhered to the same notion before. This is roughly what I infer post-modernists are accusing me of (in effigy): the fomenting of groundless narrative.
Anyway, your paragraph #5 (in msg #494) I find fairly satisfying enough without my leading this thread any further astray. Thank you. That paragraph is a good takeaway for me.
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I have added epigraphs to the previous drafts, which also changes the endnote numbering.
I modified what is now endnote 12 on pages 35–36 of Chapter 1.
With regard to Chapter 2, I have, in light of Bob Wess’s comments (thank you, Bob!), modified the discussion of postmodernism near the bottom of page 6 of Chapter 2 and have also changed the content of endnote 13 in that paragraph. Furthermore, I have added two paragraphs to my discussion of the principle of (non)contradiction on pages 26–27.
Bob Wess and Jim Vice will both appreciate the new epigraph to Chapter 2, which quotes Wayne Booth, Dean of the College (and professor of literature) when we were all at the University of Chicago during the 1960s. Booth’s 1970 book Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age contains as chapter 1 his 1967 essay titled “Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me! Rhetoric Today, Left, Right, and Center” from which my quotation is taken. An excerpt from this essay (which was originally a talk to students) was posted by the University of Chicago Magazine at https://mag.uchicago.edu/arts-humanit.... (This magazine article incorrectly states the title of Booth’s 1970 book; the correct title is set forth above.) My update: the more things change, the more they stay the same. It might as well have been written in 2022. I was unaware of Booth’s 1967 essay or his 1970 book until recently. I wish I had read the essay during the late 1960s, as it expressed almost exactly what I was thinking (and even writing) during that period, and my views on that subject have not changed one iota since that time.
This comment is being filed in both the “Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking” and the “Human Ethics: Basis, Principles, Applications” topics of this Goodreads group.
(edited April 4, 2022)
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
The above-referenced excerpts are from the published book (see https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E....
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
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I strongly recommend reading the except from Wayne Booth’s 1967 talk to students at https://mag.uchicago.edu/arts-humanit.... I have rarely, if ever, seen such an excellent summary of the meaning of human reason.
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If you read my chapter on "Human Reason” (https://www.academia.edu/74417357/Hum...), especially pages 8–10, you will understand what I am talking about. Questions of theology, mathematics, analytic philosophy, linguistics, semantics, and metaphysics are outside the scope of this group except to the extent, if any, that they are relevant to ethical or political philosophy: see posts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 14, 16, 24, 26, and 31 in the “Rules and Housekeeping” topic.
Alan E. Johnson
Founder and Moderator of the Goodreads “Political Philosophy and Ethics” group
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
The above-referenced excerpts are from the published book (see https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E....
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
Mod
For my part, mathematical theology has strong implications for all branches of philosophy, including ethical..."
I suggest you discuss your ideas in the “Philosophy” Goodreads group or in Goodreads groups devoted to theology or religion. Ethical or political views that depend on a preexisting premise of the existence of a supernatural being are not within the scope of the present group. We explore issues of ethical and political philosophy, not ethical and political theology.
re: #497Cogent speech that reminds me of that great past age of social commentary and social criticism. That era of Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, John Kenneth Galbraith, Mort Sahl. There were years when American sages could casually lay an op-ed piece in the New Yorker and the entire republic would be ashamed of some national policy, as if one body. Intellectuals and journalists alike, might discuss the impact of the essay for years; the policy might even alter because a new concept being coined. Phrases like "generation gap" or "ugly American" were keenly influential.
Today, there is no American body politic; just 280 million separate individuals. Everybody listens only to their own playlist.
Oh well. Moving words by Wayne.
Political Philosophy and Ethics
Books mentioned in this topic
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Volume 4: The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms (other topics)Mythical Thought (other topics)
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge (other topics)
Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (other topics)
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language (other topics)
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Arthur Koestler (other topics)Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (other topics)
Edward R. Tufte (other topics)
Richard Saul Wurman (other topics)
I think you may be missing my point, which is that both ends and means should be rationally examined and evaluated. It is not solely a question of consequences, though consequences certainly must be considered, especially by political actors.
A woman who wants to have a large family does not necessarily have a bad end: raising children to be rational and ethical is, indeed, a noble and rational end.
I would say that the father who pressures his son to follow in his own footsteps is irrational. Incidentally, this is exactly what happened between my father and his father. Although my father would have liked me to follow in his own footsteps, he did not insist on it, remembering his own experiences with his father. Similarly, I did not pressure my son to follow in my own footsteps. Individuals have different personalities and interests. Everyone has a moral right to go their own way in life, so long as it does not involve criminal or other unethical conduct.
I would not say that Napoleon was an ethical person, though some (not all) of his consequences were, for the most part, ethical and rational, e.g., the Napoleonic Code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleo...). There are some parallels here with the Roman empire and the extension of Roman law. But these are very large questions for which I do not immediately have the time or space to provide a thoughtful and coherent account.